The Challenge of Belief

When Casey Affleck announced last week that the film he made about Joaquin Phoenix was a complete fiction–that,
indeed, the whole “character” of meltdown/I’m-quitting-actor Phoenix
was just the latest convincing performance for the acclaimed actor–I
think some of us were genuinely surprised. As much as we all have
built-in mechanisms for fakery-detection these days (because we’ve been
duped so many times in our lives, growing up as we did in the
advertising age), there are still bits and pieces of us that long to believe. But it’s increasingly hard to keep this capacity alive.

In a world where an actor can pull the leg of the media for two
years, and get us to believe (however suspiciously) that he is
legitimately losing his mind, why should we believe anything we see
actors do in their “real lives”? Is Lindsay Lohan really failing drug
tests? Is that really meat Lady Gaga is wearing? Does Bill O’Reilly
actually believe half the things he says? It’s hard to take anything at
face value.

I saw the film Catfish this weekend–a documentary about a
Facebook relationship. The film observes photographer Nev Schulman
during his online romance with “Megan,” who he gets to know on Facebook
(along with her whole family). As the film progresses, however, Nev
begins to have doubts about who Megan actually is. Is she a real person?
What would happen if he tried to meet her in person?

The film (which you should see)
demonstrates our contemporary longing for connection in a world that is
increasingly surreal, virtual, and subject to doubt. It underscores how
prone we are to trust what we feel to be real, even though experience
increasingly proves our skepticism warranted. Should we believe anything
anymore? What can be trusted?

We used to trust authority. Presidents, politicians, pastors… Not so
much anymore. It’s hard when the media constantly feeds us stories of
the scandals, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of these formerly heroic,
respectable officials.

What about parents? Family? Friends? Can we have faith in them
either? One hopes we can. But the pervasive paranoia and understandable
skepticism of our era does make even this a challenge. Parents
disappoint. Friend betray. We have many reasons to be cautious about
trusting even those closest to us. But trust we must. How else could we
live?

What in life can be believed without faith? I’m not sure there is much. Maybe the fact that 2+2=4? Maybe gravity?

Some would suggest that science provides the ultimate provable,
“faith is not necessary” framework wherein reality becomes comfortably,
reliably knowable. But it seems to me that even science–glorious human
endeavor though it may be–is as subject to doubt as anything else.

In her recent book, Absence of Mind (which you should read),
the brilliant Marilynne Robinson takes on the science-faith dichotomy,
and challenges the scientific bias against the metaphysical. Can our
endlessly complicated, ever surprising humanity really be understood by a
“few simple formulae,” or explained fully in terms of “optimization”
through natural processes? Does the data of science help us understand
our self? Certainly. But data should be thoughts of as “gifts,” not
“givens,” suggests Robinson. We must recognize that science is limited
and insufficient to give account of all the mysteries of existence, and
that we must maintain “an appropriate humility in the face of what we
think we know.”

In the end, very little knowledge in this world is ironclad. Very
little is absolutely proved or exhaustively understood. Vast mystery
inheres in every moment of our lives, in all the minutia. But that
doesn’t debilitate us; we have faith in the functioning of the world.
Faith is inescapable, even if we don’t often recognize it as such.

The world may seem more dubious, confusing, and uncertain than it
used to. Belief may seem increasingly unwise. But the reality is: The
world has always been a rather unbelievable, mysterious place.
And belief has always been a challenge. But it’s a good sort of
challenge–the kind that both enthralls and exhausts us, expands our
human capacity and helps us realize more fully what we were meant to be.